Document US 2009/0206984 A1 discloses such a device like a mobile phone with Near Field Communication (NFC) functionality. NFC technology has been developed by an industry consortium under the name of NFC Forum (http://www.nfc-forum.ofg) and derives from RFID technology. NFC components may operate in a “Reader” mode, a “Card Emulation” mode and a “Peer-2-Peer” mode as standardized in ISO 18.092. An NFC component emits via its Near Field Communication contactless interface magnetic fields, sends data by modulating the amplitude of the magnetic field, and receives data by load modulation and inductive coupling. In the emulation mode, described for instance in EP 1 327 222 the NFC component operates passively like a transponder to engage in a dialog with another reader and to be seen by the other reader as an RFID chip.
The device disclosed in US 2009/0206984 A1 comprises a host controller circuit or mobile phone processor that processes all device applications relevant for the normal telephone functionality. These applications for instance enable to take a call, send a SMS or search the Internet. To add the Near Field Communication feature to this mobile phone a separate integrated circuit named NFC controller circuit has been added to this mobile phone. The NFC Forum Specification “NFC Controller Interface (NCI)” defines the interface protocol to be used to enable communication between the host controller circuit and the NFC controller circuit. The host controller circuit implements this NCI Interface with a stack of software named host driver that communicates based on the NCI interface with a stack of software named controller driver processed in the NFC controller circuit.
FIG. 1 shows such a typical set-up of a host controller circuit 1 and a NFC controller circuit 2 of a standard NFC architecture of a state of the art device. FIG. 2 shows a more detailed block diagram of functionalities processed within these two integrated circuits and a smart card (UICC) connected to the NFC controller circuit 2 via a Single Wire Protocol. The device host of the host controller circuit processes device applications that use the Near Field communication application partially processed in the device host and partially processed in the NCI-FW (Stack) of the NFC controller circuit 2. The NCI-FW (Stack) in this standard NFC architecture enables the communication with the host controller circuit 1 via the NCI interface as controller driver.
Drawback for this standard NFC architecture is a limited ability to update the part of the Near Field communication application processed in the NFC controller circuit 2. The NCI interface does not enable an easy and fast way of such an over the air update. In particular as most of the times the NFC controller circuit 2 for a mobile phone manufacturer is a third party integrated circuit with very limited influence on updates of firmware processed on the NFC controller circuit 2. Furthermore the NFC controller circuit 2 has only limited memory space and processing capacity compared to the host controller circuit 1, what limits the possibility to enable e.g. a multitude of new payment applications from different credit card companies.
Document WO 2012/065643 A1 furthermore discloses a device (e.g. mobile phone) that comprises a host controller circuit that processes device applications and a NFC controller circuit that processes and enables a Near Field Communication contactless interface. This document discloses a mechanism of routing data from the NFC controller circuit to different NFC Execution environments. The device disclosed in WO 2012/065643 A1 comprises the same drawbacks as stated above.